Wednesday, September 19, 2007

It does the soul good, you know

First, an important announcement. September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I've done my bit, though the eyepatch had to come off at about 2pm as strange Moire hallucinations were starting to happen to my covered eye.

Just yesterday, Destiny Church deregistered as a political party and said it was forming a new party with other Christian groups. They announced former Destiny New Zealand leader Richard Lewis would be a co-leader.

Independent MP Gordon Copeland then announced he was the other co-leader and said Mr Lewis' appointment was news to him.

Mr Copeland says he is today in damage control mode, as it all looks "Mickey Mouse and shambolic", which is not the way it was planned. He met with Mr Lewis for two hours at Parliament today and claims the Destiny Church representative apologised for landing him in it. However, Mr Lewis says he did not apologise.

[...]

[NewsTalk ZB political editor] Barry Soper suggested to Mr Copeland that it does not auger well for future relations and the MP replied "You can say that again".

But the comment that brings tears of delight to my eyes is from the end of the New Zealand Herald's piece on the same story. It's important to know that Peter Dunne is not by any stretch of the imagination a liberal by NZ standards:

"But frankly anything that involves [Destiny Church leader Brian] Tamaki and the black shirts is doomed to fail."

Self-styled Bishop Brian Tamaki is probably the closest thing we have to a US-style televangelist, and in the words of Douglas Adams, I would trust him about as far as I could comfortably spit a rat. I'm not alone, either; at the last general election Destiny New Zealand polled a whopping 0.6% of the vote. Let's hope that sanity persists.

[...]Destiny Church yesterday went off the prepared hymn sheet and prematurely named Lewis as a co-leader - it took Copeland by surprise, he was forced to come clean.[...]Yesterday Destiny's Brian Tamaki suggested all the major churches were on board, but when 3 News rang around today we found no senior clergymen or representatives have signed up at all.